Today, multimedia content and programming is available from a variety of different multimedia content providers. For example, today there are many broadcast television, cable, satellite, and Internet service operators that can provide multimedia programming to consumers in their homes and elsewhere. Further, many consumers consume multimedia programming from more than one content provider. For example, it is increasingly common for a consumer to consume multimedia programming from a broadcast television, cable, or satellite content provider in addition to one or more Internet-based content providers. This consumer practice of “multi-sourcing” multimedia programming should become more and more prevalent as the availability of high-bandwidth Internet connections to the home and mobile computing devices increases.
With the growth in availability of multimedia programming from content providers, a consumer can often be in a situation where a program of interest is being offered by a content provider at a time that is not convenient for consumption or at a time that conflicts with the offering of another program of interest. For example, the season premiere of a highly anticipated television program may be broadcast by a content provider at the same time the content provider is also broadcasting a live sports event. To allow consumers to consume multimedia programming of interest at times that are most convenient to the consumers, Digital Video Recording (DVR) systems have been developed. A DVR system allows a user to record multimedia programs at the time they are offered by content providers yet consume the recorded multimedia programs at a later time. For example, the DVR system may allow the user to view the live sports event while recording the season premiere of the television program and allow the user to view the season premiere after watching the live sports event even though both the live sports event and the season premiere were broadcast by the content provider at the same time.
Typically, the DVR system itself is located where the user consumes multimedia content from content providers. For example, the DVR system may be a component of the user's in-home television system that receives multimedia content via a cable, network, or satellite link. The DVR system typically stores recorded multimedia programming in a digital form to a local storage device component of to the DVR system. Further, the DVR system may provide program recording scheduling capabilities that allow the user to configure the DVR system with a program recording schedule. For example, the DVR system may be configured to automatically record a certain television channel for one hour every Friday at 8 p.m. The program recording schedule is typically stored and maintained locally as a data component of the DVR system. As a result, if an old or defective DVR system is replaced with a new DVR system, the program recording schedule on the replaced DVR system may need to be re-configured by the user on the new DVR system. Typically, this means that the user is required to duplicate work already performed for the replaced DVR system. The user may find this duplicative work to be tedious and time-consuming.
Another drawback to typical approaches for managing program recording schedules in DVR systems is that each DVR system may have to be separately and independently configured by the user with a program recording schedule. This is inconvenient if the user operates multiple DVR systems. For example, the user may operate one DVR system attached to a television in the living room and another DVR system attached to a television in a bedroom. If the user wants to view a recorded program in two different locations or from two different DVR systems, copying or moving the program between DVR systems may not be a viable option. For example, it may be a violation of copyright restrictions to copy a multimedia program stored on one DVR system to another DVR system. As another example, the DVR system may record multimedia content with Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection which prevents playback of recorded multimedia content on any DVR system other than the one that recorded the content. Further, the data size of a recorded program may so large that copying or moving the recorded program from one DVR system to another, even over a high-bandwidth link, may take a prohibitive amount of time. One possible solution to this dilemma is for the user to separately and independently configure each of the multiple DVR systems to record the desired program. However, as noted above, the user may find this duplicative work to be tedious and time-consuming.
Given the drawbacks of typical approaches for managing program recording schedules in DVR systems, an improved technique is needed.